Friday, 20 July 2012

A Gendered Problematic

I was filled with disgust and repugnance when I heard about the incident of a
16-year old girl in Guwahati being assaulted by a mob, and being molested,
beaten and stripped. There was a huge uproar on Facebook and Twitter; people
demanded justice, said lots of things which have been said before. This wasn't
the first incident where a woman was brutally assaulted by a unruly mob, in an
Indian city. And—forgive my cynical disposition—this was certainly not going to
be the last.

But this
particular issue, of late, has acquired several dimensions, mostly political;
the Chief Minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, alleged that this incident was
a conspiracy against
the government. There have been rumours doing rounds - as they always do - of
Youth Congress involvement. Most of all, people have been critical, and rightly
so, of the so-called journalist for News Live, Gauravjyoti Neyog, for
instigating the perpetrators. Many, therefore, have criticized News Live
too for broadcasting the incident; while they (News Live), on the other hand,
claim that had they not done so, the issue would've remained unnoticed.

What I found
staggering - apart from the callousness and brutality of the incident - is the
aftermath of it, which is manifest in two ways. One of them is outrage over the
representation of the incident in Tehelka's latest cover.
People, largely, have accused Tehelka - a magazine with the reputation of being
one of India's leading critical publications - of cheap, insensitive gimmicks
to garner eyeballs. The other reaction was to the series of gaffes made by the
National Commission for Women, wherein Alka
Lamba, a member of the fact finding team, revealed the name of the victim.
Next, Mamta Sharma, the NCW chief, said "women
should dress carefully to avoid crime...and not ape the West."

What I read into
these two instances are two things: one, that no matter the seriousness of the
crime against women, no matter its severity, its brutality, there is really no
one on the side of the victim; not the government, least of all local authorities.
And two, that we, as a society, are so indoctrinated into patriarchy and
misogyny, will try to subvert the issue in question: which is, a woman being
assaulted/hurt/murdered/raped and discuss tangential issues.

I shall tackle the second observation first. Just
some time back, I read a piece in LiveMintby
Salil Tripathi. While the piece itself was not something particularly profound
and engaging, the comments on it, I found, were staggeringly stupid. Yes,
stupid.

People seemed to
have taken exceptional offense to his reference to Draupadi's
disrobing in the Mahabharata, as a metaphor for the attenuated response we have
towards these kinds of incidents; of being apathetic bystanders. They, instead
of engaging with the issue of the girl being a victim of the assault, decided
to tangentially argue against the author's conception of Mahabharata and his
reluctance to engage with the political angle (the Youth Congress involvement)
of the whole incident.

Similar arguments
have been made against the Tehelka cover. I do not condone what Tehelka's
done. It's wrong on so many levels. It's distasteful. But so was this
incident. And fact is, even then, people are fixated on conspiracy theories and
political coups. People took offense, vehemently so, to Mahabharata references
- choosing to defend Hinduism instead.

That a girl was
assaulted, brutally so, is collectively, forgotten. It's not Tehelka's cover
which is distasteful; but the way public discourse is organised. The image is a
macabre spectre which will haunt us. For it reflects a deep, rotten part of the
way we've come to organize ourselves as a public. For as long as women's rights
don't take prominence in discourse, it will remain an utterly marginalized
cause.

The NCW chief’s reaction, while being utterly
shameful, reflects the power of patriarchal discourse. It shifts the blame on
the woman, presuming that safety of women is agentic on their complete removal
from the public sphere. What this does is, it ossifies the public as something
which is essentially uncontrolled, aggressive, and violent even. However, for
most women, the private is also a domain of subjugation and violence—and
perhaps of a worse kind. This kind of lopsided analysis fails to take into
account that patriarchy is, primarily, a power construct; and, that men are as
much the victims of it, as are women, albeit of a different kind of
victimization. The difference is, our victimization is hinged on victimizing
others—something I find deeply disturbing and shameful.

In this context,
Natasha Badhwar’s piece in LiveMint on
examining societal and cultural controls on women’s sexuality is an interesting
read. What I took from it, is an understanding that patriarchy, as a hegemonic
structure is far more complex than just domination of women. It survives by
making men into instruments of domination—which is, I believe, a kind of
victimization in itself.

Any understanding of patriarchy and gender,
therefore, has to factor in the question of sexuality—that the sexuality of one
group (both, actually) is something that has to controlled. Sexuality in India
is terribly controlled by morality, religion, family, community and a host of
other surveillance mechanisms. That sexuality is natural, that it is a part of
being human, is completely and violently ousted in our understanding of
ourselves. Hence, violence remains the only way in which sexuality can be
negotiated by men; it's a crime, but it's a structural problem. And a deeply
social one, too.

The refusal to
discuss women's victimization as it being perpetrated by men, and therefore
patriarchy, reflects the shameful lack of initiative on the part of society as
a whole - and that it chooses to further victimize the woman, by assigning
blame on her.

Violence against women, sexual harassment,
then, instead of being a result of this structural imbalance in negotiation
sexuality, is ascribed purely on the basis of patriarchal morals.

Can we then really blame patriarchy for
everything, thus absolving ourselves of any action, or more so, justifying our
inaction? No. I don’t believe so; because that would be stupid.

Patriarchy is a
power construct, but it is also multidimensional; it, at once, makes men into
violent, uncouth perpetrators of crimes of the most heinous nature, and
propagates women’s oppression by having them internalize oppression and
perpetrate it on to others; mothers to daughters and so forth. It also
attenuates the criticality of our responses in the guise of pragmatism and
false consciousness. There has not been any alternative system to patriarchy
(arguably, since there have been matrilineal societies and
social groups; however, patriarchy's permeation into states and politics tends
to obfuscate the relevance of matriarchy as a concept); it has existed since
the time humans began settled life. But that should not mean that we bow down
to its arbitrary constructs of maleness, femaleness, heteronormativity and so
forth. More so, there is an urgent need to critically engage with, respond to
and challenge patriarchy—particularly it’s ‘taken-for-granted’ nature. We need
to bring the oppression of women, and the violence against them, into the
centre of public discourse—and not make tangential and irrelevant arguments.

For, I repeat,
as long as women's rights don't take prominence in public discourse, they will
remain an utterly marginalized cause.